1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and a control method thereof and, more particularly, to an information processing apparatus for efficiently informing information associated with update details of software and a control method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is a common practice for each software developer to distribute software of the latest version to users via the Internet. That is, when the version of software installed in a user's PC becomes no longer the latest version, the software developer supplies software of the latest version to the user via the Internet in response to a request from the user. Upon supplying software of the latest version, the software developer also informs the user of modifications from the immediately preceding version. More specifically, the software developer supplies document data called release notes as a list of modifications from functions before update to those after update. The user displays the supplied document data of the release notes on his or her PC.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-165418 describes that when new version of data is registered, a document management server informs a user, who is registered as an informing destination associated with an older version of the data, that the new version has been registered. Thus, according to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-165418, the user can be avoided from receiving information about revisions of data which are not related to his or her work.
Note that Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-165418 does not have any description about information to be provided to the user when a plurality of updates have been made for predetermined software.
On the other hand, when a plurality of updates have been made for predetermined software, release notes normally describe modifications from the immediately preceding update for each update. For this reason, the release notes include many pieces of information of modifications in the plurality of updates. However, few users require information associated with modifications in all updates. Especially, information in an older update is not normally required. In particular, when the release notes include many pieces of information that are not needed for the users, efforts required for the users to recognize needed information from the release notes are increased. That is, efficiency upon providing information associated with a plurality of update details for software to users drops.
When a plurality of updates have been made, release notes that describe all modifications in respective updates are as shown in, for example, FIG. 7A. FIG. 7A shows an example of release notes when predetermined software (application X) of version 5.0 has undergone five updates from version 5.1 to version 5.5, and the release notes include respective update details (modifications) 701 to 709. The release notes are likely to include information which is not needed for users. For example, when an issue that occurred in an intermediate update (version 5.2 in this case) was fixed in a later update (version 5.3 in this case), as denoted by reference numeral 704 in FIG. 7A, users who use the versions (version 5.3 or later) after fixing are unlikely to require information associated with that issue. In this way, as for issues and modifications, which occurred in a certain update and were solved in a later update, in a plurality of updates, the users do not want to know about mere existence of such issues. Therefore, the necessity of the modification 704 included in the release notes is low.
A modification 706 imparts that display of slideshows of both still pictures and movies was enabled in a slideshow function. For this reason, the necessity of a modification 702 (display of a slideshow of only still pictures was enabled) associated with the slideshow function in an older update is also low. That is, when a specific function was modified a plurality of times in updates, it often suffices to inform a final modification without informing intermediate modification details.
A modification 708 imparts that a red-eye correction function was finally removed. Therefore, the necessity to inform modifications associated with the red-eye correction function in older updates (modifications 701, 705, and 707 in the example of FIG. 7A) is also low. Furthermore, since version 5.0 before the first update did not include any red-eye correction function, the necessity to display the modification 708 which informs that the red-eye correction function was removed is originally low.